If it doesn’t resonate, people won’t connect!
Imagine your mobile phone ringing reminders that you didn’t set, or a stranger trying to make a conversation you’re not up to, or brands advertising about male shaving products when you had asked for female beauty products. Sounds vague and abrupt, isn’t it? Be it a conversation, advertisement, a message, or an email, if the recipient, viewer or user won’t find it relatable, forget about sales, they won’t even engage in any sort of communication.
It’s the era of hyper-personalization, and the smart consumers today, won’t hesitate to provide their personal information if it can enhance their overall experience. If we particularly talk about shopping experiences, consumers were fond of in-store shopping for a long time (many still are). That is because when they revisit the same store, they are not treated as some random shoppers. Shopkeepers provide them special treatments and are aware of their shopping preferences. Thanks to tech advancements like Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning, and Big Data, the digital world too is becoming personalized.
Personalization In Emails
Emails were, and are still, a preferred source of communication for consumers and businesses both. With the help of AI, they are now customized and targeted. Email personalization is a crucial element for your email marketing campaigns. It has become more of a necessity if you want to create an impact. A recent article by Forbes unraveled some email personalization stats that every marketer should take note of.
-
-
- Marketers witness a gigantic 760% increase in email revenue from personalized and segmented email campaigns.
- 71% of the consumers accept to engage (open and read) a brand email if it provides a personalized experience.
- Personalized email calls to action (CTAs) are capable of converting 202% better than the standardized ones.
- 55% of consumers believe that targeted promotional messages create a more enjoyable shopping experience.
-
We can go on and on with the list because personalization has not only penetrated into the email marketing industry, it has ravishingly boosted the performance. AI is helping a great deal for brands to hyper personalize their emails. Let’s understand the role that AI plays in email personalization.
AI in Email Personalization
AI enables emails to talk individually to each recipient. The personalization we are indicating goes beyond just addressing the users by their name. Data and behavioral aspects are considered in these targeted emails. With AI taking charge, it is now possible to optimize every part of the email. Let’s explore how it is done…
-
-
Adding the human touch
-
The goal is to humanize email campaigns that can offer a one-on-one communication feel. Emails backed by AI are data-driven and customized. A huge part of incorporating AI into emails is connected with analysis, a lot of it! Understanding user behavior by studying their website visit touchpoints, their way of responding to past emails, the action triggers, browsing and purchase history, engagement metrics, subscription preference, and a lot more. The list that might sound daunting to analyze is possible with AI tools. An excellent example of such a tool is the Salesforce Marketing Cloud. You can start by asking your subscribers’ preferences and move ahead with probing tailor-made solutions as they react.
-
-
Effective Email List Segmentation
-
Marketers need no validations when it comes to proving the benefits of segmented lists. With AI on your side, you can effectively smart segment the subscribers into groups. You can create segments based on,
-
-
-
- Demographics
- Geographies
- Interests
- Industry
- Purchase history
- Browsing history
- Purchase cycle
- Buying frequency
- Past order data
- Order size, and more
-
-
This can be just an exemplary list as the potential is limitless. Personalizing emails (Converted from PSD to Email HTML) is a process of understanding subscriber behaviors individually and acting upon it. Upsell and cross-sell is possible only when you’ve studied the past purchases or interests of a user, and AI helps you segment such details with smart email lists. Have a look at the email example below.
(Source: Really Good Emails)
This email by Uber is a B2B email sent to one of its drivers. With effective tracking through AI algorithms, Uber is celebrating a milestone of 100 trips. Small gestures like this can go a long way, and it is only possible with personalization.
-
-
The Email Copy
-
When we said earlier that you can optimize every part of the email with the help of AI, we weren’t joking. Starting with the email subject line, subscriber name personalization, content relevancy, tailored-offer, placement of CTAs, recommendations, and a lot more is possible with AI. It eliminates the guesswork in an email about ‘what may work’ and focuses on ‘what has worked’. In fact, emails with personalized subject lines are 26% more likely to be opened, and personalization consists of many such email copy components that can augment the overall email performance. This gives a boost in email open, click-through, and most importantly, conversion rates.
(Source: Really Good Emails)
This email template by Spotify triggers actions by offering a customized email copy to the people who have rated the said artist to be their favorite. They have made it more interactive by adding scrollable images with song links.
-
-
Optimized Email Send Time
-
Sending email ‘at the right time’ has been emphasized enough by the market leaders. Not just the right people or the right content but also the right sending time makes a difference. AI gathers data about your past campaigns to quickly come up with some engagement metrics. The campaigns that got the highest email opens, CTRs, and conversions in the past can be tracked down by the times they’ve been sent. This enables brands to effectively schedule their email campaigns for the time when their subscribers are most active.
-
-
Drip Campaigns
-
Drip email campaigns or automated emails are an integral part of email personalization. Consistency is still the key and when you send more than one email, focusing around the same topic such as recommendation, cart abandonment, or welcome series, your subscribers see you as positive-persuaders. Automated emails are based on user-actions, and thus contain the highest level of relevancy. With effective email personalization practices in place, such workflows can become your routine without much effort.
Pro Personalization Tip – A vital thing to keep in mind while designing personalized email campaigns is to use only the required information from the tracked data. Too much personalization may kill the essence as subscribers will feel their privacy is being invaded.
Wrap Up
Email personalization is an art of converting prospects into customers with implicit lead nurturing techniques. AI is here to stay and bloom, and when it comes to emails, personalization is impacted beneficially with all the advancements that it brings. Humane, on-demand, and relevant emails are appreciated by users across all vertices. If you find it challenging to establish AI-baked email personalization campaigns, take help from an email marketing agency that can guide you.
About the Author
Kevin George is Head of Marketing at Email Uplers, one of the fastest-growing custom email design and coding companies, and specializes in crafting professional email templates, PSD to HTML email conversion and free HTML email templates in addition to providing email automation, campaign management, and data integration & migration services. He loves gadgets, bikes, jazz, and eats and breathes email marketing. He enjoys sharing his insights and thoughts on email marketing best practices on his blog.
